Scott D. Pierce

This series recycles just about every TV medical drama cliché you can imagine. It's not just that it's predictable, but it's utterly unbelievable. And all attempts to make it quirky and delightful just make it lame and dumb.

Gail Pennington

Gwen Ihnat

Where Grey’s benefits from an ensemble approach, Heartbeat pins all its hopes on this one surgeon, and the problem is that she’s obnoxious, and nearly infallible.... That’s why Heartbeat is doomed: We’ve seen more compelling versions of all of this before.

Glenn Garvin

Dan Fienberg

Brian Lowry

The series plays like a rather pallid “Grey’s Anatomy” knockoff, featuring another doctor who cares desperately about her patients, runs roughshod over subordinates and bosses alike, and walks and talks very, very fast.

Amber Dowling

Unfortunately, by the end of the first hour, viewers may find themselves looking for a pulse rather than committing to future installments, let alone pondering the state of female medical practitioners in the industry and their work-home life balance.

Michael Slezak

All of Alex’s quirks (she has a tendency to spit while talking) and surgical brilliance (practically on a whim, she pulls off a heart transplant procedure that only four others have managed before her) can’t mask the grim fact that she’s ultimately a collection of threadbare drama-series clichés. ... Even worse, the show’s supporting characters are all some combination of bland, unbelievable, and/or reprehensible.

Nancy DeWolf Smith

Heartbeat does have moments that are satisfying emotionally. Yet the TV trope of the hospital with its motley cast of dedicated caregivers--the contemporary trajectory goes from “St. Elsewhere” to “ER” to “Grey’s Anatomy”--is difficult to riff on in a fresh way. So surgeon Dr. Alexandra Panettiere ( Melissa George) has to jump the shark by being a superwoman.

Robert Lloyd

Some of it might have been written by a computer, sure, but a better class of computer than sometimes is hired to write for TV. The cast, which also includes D.L. Hughley as a psychologist, Maya Erskine as a nurse and Jamie Kennedy as an unkempt, somewhat obnoxious doctor (softened in later episodes), is pleasant company.

Daniel D'Addario

Mitchel Broussard

Some characters spark and it’s far from the mess it could have been, but like every medical show since Grey’s Anatomy‘s 8th season (yes, including Grey’s Anatomy), it employs the genre’s tropes in a manner that barely feels like it has a pulse of its own.

Ed Bark

It bounces off the walls of St. Matthew’s, with its rush-about protagonist flirting, sobbing, threatening, cajoling and commiserating, all the while trying to find the true meaning of something or other. Sedative, please. STAT.

Isaac Feldberg

TV is glutted with generic medical dramas, from the ridiculous “Night Shift” to the thoroughly middle-of-the-road “Code Black.” This one marks a very slight improvement, elevated by a fine protagonist played by a fine actress.